


a blanket of stars

by couldaughter



Series: a star-sent sign that i'll be alright [2]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Community College, Excessive Research, M/M, alien reveal, and they were ROOMMATES
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:26:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21904438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couldaughter/pseuds/couldaughter
Summary: “I’m from outer space,” said Michael.Alex took a moment to consider that.“You’re such a bad liar, Guerin,” he said. “Iknewyou weren’t going to the fucking gym.”
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: a star-sent sign that i'll be alright [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1577776
Comments: 9
Kudos: 107





	a blanket of stars

**Author's Note:**

> CW/TW: canon typical references to child abuse

As it turned out, people in Albuquerque thought coming from Roswell was literally the most interesting thing on the planet.

“So, what was that _like_?” asked the fourth person that evening, leaning over the back of a really disgusting couch, solo cup in hand. “Did you ever get, like, _abducted_?”

“No,” said Alex, for the fourth time. “But my roommate totally did. You should ask him about it, like, right now.” He glanced over his shoulder, hoping in vain to catch a glimpse of familiar curls.

“Your _roommate_ split like an hour ago, dude,” said Tan-from-the-GSA, apologetic. Alex turned towards them with a sigh.

“It’s not really his kind of scene,” he said. And it wasn’t, really. Michael wasn’t a house party kind of guy, for all he liked to front about being a bad boy. It wasn’t Alex’s either, but he didn’t have that many friends in his program yet, while Michael was apparently a rock star physicist after one semester. He was doing his best to catch up.

Tan shrugged. Their hair was a kind of faded purple, dark brown at the roots, but Alex had spotted them at CVS the day before in the haircare aisle, so he thought there must be some kind of dye revolution coming in the near future. “Diff’rent strokes, right?”

“Sure,” he replied. He smiled and took a sip of his own drink - just diet coke. He was his own designated driver, since he didn’t have a car and definitely didn’t have the cash on hand for a cab.

Walking was good exercise, at least. He told himself that a lot.

He lasted another thirty minutes at the party - some guy in his computer science class throwing one last rager before winter break - before he made his excuses and headed out. 

The streets were pretty quiet at close to midnight, hardly anyone out except college kids like Alex or night shift workers having a smoke break. The Taco Bell was shut, but he could see a couple cleaners through the window.

It was a pretty long walk back to the apartment he and Michael were renting, a two bedroom place opposite a Family Dollar. It was more than they could afford, really, considering the circumstances, but neither of them wanted to live with strangers. It was bad enough having to learn to live with each other.

They’d found it after a couple weekends driving back and forth between there and Roswell, while Alex panicked over his late application to CNM and the enlistment papers he checked on every night and Michael spent hours pouring over newspaper ads for cheap rentals while he tried to buy the kind of essentials he’d never needed when he lived out of his truck.

Neither of them had ever owned silverware before. Adulthood was a trip.

Alex was picking up shifts at Satellite Coffee in between classes for a major he was probably going to switch and Michael was writing essays for jocks in his Gen Ed classes for cash. It was enough.

The door always stuck on the first push. He leaned into it with his shoulder, gave it a solid shove, and kicked his boots off next to the pile of junk mail collecting on the mat. The door shut behind him with an uncommonly soft _click_.

“Honey, I’m home,” he murmured. There was a light on in the kitchen, but that didn’t necessarily mean Michael was still awake. He’d spent a lot of the past three months learning how to live in a house again, utility bills included.

He went to the kitchen anyway. He could do with a sandwich, and the bread needed eating before it went green like the last loaf had.

Michael was, in fact, in the kitchen. His back was turned to the door. The dishes they’d left in the sink before the party were all stacked neatly on the rack, slowly dripping leftover suds onto the draining board.

Half their canned food, unbranded and with a ton of added salt, was floating in a lazy circle above his head.

Alex backed out of the kitchen, socked feet silent on the tile.

Their apartment wasn’t that big. The entryway had a door through to the lounge on the right, the kitchenette the other side of that. The two bedrooms were on the left of the entryway, one that they shared and one that they kept made up, either for guests or for Alex when either one of them needed a little space. They'd had to rent two, in the end. All the one bedrooms they'd applied for had seen both their names on the paperwork and rejected them out of hand.

Alex went into the second bedroom and lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Some previous tenant must’ve had a kid, because there were a lot of glow in the dark stars stuck to the plain white paint.

The sheets had stars on as well. Michael had bought them a couple weeks before, after the shitty machine at the laundromat ripped a hole in their last set.

 _Maybe they remind him of home_ , thought Alex, somewhat hysterical. To be fair, Michael might not be an alien. He could have the x-gene, or maybe he’d found a copy of _So You Want To Be a Wizard_ on a foster home bookshelf, or maybe Alex had finally cracked under the strain of community college and was hallucinating the whole thing.

Some of those possibilities seemed a little more likely than others.

He was still lying there, feeling very removed from reality, when Michael walked past the doorway, paused, and walked in.

“Hey,” said the space alien Alex was probably in love with. “Didn’t hear you come in.”

“Nice juggling act,” said Alex, because he was always an asshole under pressure. He wished the lamp was on. At that moment all he had was the fucking stars on the ceiling.

Michael blinked, face going blank. “Don’t know what you mean,” he said, not convincing at all. “How come you’re in here?”

“Thought I’d get a closer look at the Big Dipper,” said Alex. “Did you know it’s got a little kid’s handwriting right there in the middle? Bet they won’t teach you that at your fancy state college.”

“Wow, really,” said Michael. He sat down on the bed next to Alex’s hip, making the mattress dip far enough that Alex probably should’ve rolled off the thing entirely. He didn’t move. “Oh, yeah, I see it. I’ll have to call up the department. Get them to rush a new textbook out.”

They stayed in silence for a couple seconds, long enough that Alex heard Michael’s breath hitch.

“So,” he said, before Michael could pretend nothing had happened. “How’d you get the cans to float? You get bitten by a radioactive magician?”

Michael looked down at him with wide eyes. Alex regretted trying to be funny.

“Sorry,” he added. “But I’d like to confirm that I’m not going actually crazy.”

His dad had not actually accepted radio silence from his youngest son. Every other week, like clockwork, Alex got an email explaining that he’d actually been brainwashed by an alien conspiracy and should come home like the dutiful son Jesse knew was under all the fairy bullshit.

It had actually been phrased like that in one of them. Alex hadn’t told Michael about it yet, but he had a feeling it would probably come up pretty imminently. He didn’t like admitting that his dad could scare him with just a couple sentences of plain text. It felt cowardly.

The bedside lamp switched on by itself, casting a long shadow up the far wall.

“You’re not,” said Michael. He sounded nervous as hell. It was not comforting. “You think I could really get all those dishes done with this thing in the way?”

He held up his hand. It was out of the full-on mummy style bandages, down to finger splints and a couple of bandaids, but it was still out of commission for more than the very lightest of tasks. It made Alex feel dizzy looking at it, still, so he tried not to look at it. And then felt guilty for not looking at it, and made sure to pay twice as much attention for the next couple days.

The cycle was not the healthiest thing in the world. CNM did have a student counsellor, but Alex had met him once and decided he was better off on his own.

“I guess not,” said Alex. He shook his head a few times, trying to get the buzzing sound out of his ears. “What’s your secret, Doctor Strange?”

There was a long pause. Alex turned his head to look up at Michael, sat stock still in the shadowy room. His eyes were closed.

Alex put one hand on Michael’s knee. He felt the same as he always did. Maybe a little colder than usual, but nothing weird.

“I’m from outer space,” said Michael.

Alex took a moment to consider that. He thought about the emails from dad, and the circus act he’d seen earlier, and a thousand tiny things that were suddenly recontextualising themselves in his memory. Doors that opened a little too easily. Michael’s truck always starting, even on the coldest mornings. Michael lifting him into bed for a week, after he sprained his ankle falling off the front step.

“You’re such a bad liar, Guerin,” he said. “I knew you weren’t going to the fucking gym.”

Michael looked at him. Alex looked back.

They’d spent a lot of the past couple of months trying to figure out how their relationship was going to work. They’d tried being casual about it, no PDA and sleeping in separate beds unless there was sex involved, but that had ended with Alex having an anxiety attack and Michael getting sent home from class with a sleep-deprived migraine. Then they’d course corrected too far the other way, which was a phase Alex had a feeling they would never fully pull away from.

They’d been basically attached at the hip for long enough that Tan finally understood Alex’s reticence in GSA meetings - when they were next to each other they never shut the fuck up. It was why he’d never brought Michael along before, and hadn’t since.

That phase had mostly ended when they’d had a screaming fight about some fucking bullshit thing - Alex thought it might’ve been something about the trashcan in the kitchen - that had ended with Alex sleeping at Tan’s apartment for a full weekend.

Max and Liz came to visit on the Sunday. Liz had come by and dragged Alex back to the apartment to hash things out while she and Max ‘saw the sights’. 

Alex loved Liz with his whole heart but the girl was not subtle.

Now they were a little better about giving each other space, but they weren’t any better at dealing with strong emotions. It came with the childhood trauma.

“Are you going to leave?” Michael said, something terrible and fragile in his voice. 

Alex sat up at that, looking at his boyfriend with something approaching amusement. “And go where, Guerin? We’re on a six month lease. I’m not breaking a legal contract just because the UFO Emporium wasn’t spouting _total_ bullshit.” 

It had also been a great place for a first kiss, but Michael knew that already. No need to say things they both knew.

Michael flinched back. “I wouldn’t blame you. I’ve been lying to you this — this whole time.”

Alex shook his head. “At what point exactly did you lie to me?” Michael frowned. Alex ploughed on. “You’ve never told me anything that wasn’t true, Michael. Like I already said, you’re a really bad liar.”

“I could’ve done — more. Back then. If you’d already known.” Michael’s fingers twitched in their splints. “I was too scared.”

 _Fuck,_ thought Alex. “We are not going to rehash that at 1am. We are _not._ ” He curled his toes against the comforter. “And we’re getting away from the point, which is that you’re an alien.”

“Yeah,” said Michael. “I guess that’s _probably_ more important. Definitely more fun.”

Alex snorted. “There’s the guy I know,” he said. “Just wanted to make sure it was still you. The telekinesis is just gonna make chores _way_ easier.”

“Aw, fuck,” said Michael. “I can see a chore wheel on the horizon.”

“Didn’t know you could see the future too,” said Alex. He grinned. “Don’t worry. I’ll go easy on you.” He leaned in closer, pressed a gentle kiss to the side of Michael’s head. “Come on. Let’s go to bed.”

“You got class in the morning?”

Alex shook his head. “No, but Satellite are gonna work me into the ground before I ever get to transfer.”

Michael vanished into their room, his eyes already starting to droop. He always dropped off quick after an adrenaline rush, halfway to sleep while Alex was still trying to get his heart rate below ninety.

It was probably one of the perks of being an alien. Alex was going to have to make a list.

It took only a couple of minutes for Alex to brush his teeth and slip on his PJs. By the time he got back to their bedroom, a room thankfully devoid of ceiling decoration, Michael was already on his side of the bed, curled under the comforter. Only the top of his head was visible.

Alex kissed it just because, then slid into bed himself. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. 

“G’night, Alex,” said Michael. A moment of silence. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Alex. He reached out a hand, felt Michael clutch it just a little too tightly. He had a feeling their conversation wasn’t over just yet. “Sleep tight, Michael.” 

He watched Michael quietly, waited for his breathing to slow. He always burrowed a little into the pillow when he fell properly asleep. 

He pushed the covers back and went to the kitchen. The light needed turning off. The dishes needed stacking.

Alex needed a little space to breathe. To process what in the fucking hell he was supposed to do about the conspiracy theory dad was trying to bring him in on. To figure out what angle he was meant to play, when all he wanted to do was press himself up against his boyfriend and never think about his piece of shit father again.

He’d have to tell Michael about the emails. He could just imagine the way his face was going to fall, the way Alex would be able to read everything he was feeling just from his eyes. How mad Michael would be that his dad was still fucking with Alex, months after he’d left his childhood home for good.

His dad was doing some kind of base inspection, that week. He’d mentioned it in the last email, and suggested that when Alex came to his senses, he’d come and collect Michael. They could both bring him in, punish him for corrupting Jesse’s youngest song. He’d said that there were a lot of things the government could learn, having _another one of those monsters_ to study.

Alex sat on the cold tile of the kitchen floor and gave himself ten minutes to freak out. Then, hands trembling, he went back to bed.

Michael made a soft noise when Alex wrapped an arm around his chest, warm and contented. Alex shivered. 

He didn’t get to sleep for a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is of course from Mrs Potter's Lullaby by Counting Crows. You can pry those lyrics from my cold dead hands, and will probably have to, because there are so fucking many of them.
> 
> Sorry for all the cursing this time around. My serotonin levels are out of whack and therefore I can do what I want.
> 
> Anyway, Alex has a lot to deal with but this time he has slightly more of a support system! Even if that support system is his best friend who is very busy banging Max Evans all over the contiguous United States. 
> 
> Michael is in a similar situation, but does not have to deal with the whole covering up a murder thing so has a little more space to deal with calling Max and Iz and explaining that Alex knows he's an alien now, but not that they are, no, he promises it's fine, he's making me oatmeal for breakfast right now and it probably doesn't have poison in it.
> 
> Stay tuned for more! Had to tease Caulfield at the end there because like... what is the point of this AU if I don't make it both horrible angsty AND way happier than the actual show?


End file.
